Introduction and Colors
Miss America depression glass is sparkling and has an elegant look, making me think many families who owned it during the depression and war years used it for their good dishes, for Sunday dinner and holidays. Hocking made Miss America from 1935 to 1938, the latter part of the depression when glass patterns shifted from the lovely, delicate looking mold etched designs to geometric patterns like this.
Miss America is a pink and crystal pattern. Hocking made all pieces in both colors, plus a few in a soft, light green, a little bit of ice blue, Jade-ite and some Royal Ruby. Hocking made a complete dinner service in pink and crystal, including serving pieces, goblets and tumblers.
Gene Florence mentions only the flat water tumbler, small plates and small bowls and the cup in green, but Replacements shows the salt and pepper shakers and larger plates too. If you get green pieces you could mix them with the crystal and pink to extend the set because the green is lovely but not all that common.
Dinnerware Pieces Available
You can set your table with 4 sizes of plates, ranging from the 5 3/4 inch sherbet liner up to the 10 1/4 inch dinner or choose a grill plate which is the same size as the dinner. The salad plate is 8 1/2 inches wide making it useful for lunch. Notice the plates have a wide raised rim, leaving just under 8 inches to use on the dinner plate for your meal. People generally had smaller plates and smaller portions in the 1930s!
There are two sizes of place setting bowls, a small berry bowl, which we’d call a sauce dish in a china service, and a wider, deeper cereal bowl. The cereal could be used for soup too.
Look for the usual cups, saucers, creamer and sugar too. The round serving bowls are particularly lovely with curved shapes and the design all over the outside and with smooth interiors. There are two oval bowls, one is quite shallow, probably meant for celery. The bowl shown below is the 8 3/4 inch, straight deep fruit bowl.
Hocking made a butter dish, cake plate, platter, two pitchers, two relish plates and salt and pepper shakers. Please note the 4-section relish which is under 9 inches across is quite easy to find and affordable but the larger relish with 5 sections is on the rare side.
These next two photos show the difference between the shallow celery and the deeper oval vegetable bowl.
Hocking didn’t make a Miss America candle holder but there is a lovely, rather fancy candy jar, footed with a lid, and a comport that could hold candy or you could use it to serve cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.
Please note the candy jar base is shaped much like a goblet, but is considerably larger and has a different design below the rib.
All the footed pieces have square feet impressed with stars. The creamer and sugar are stemmed with the feet set diagonally to the handles, unusual and attractive.
Next post will cover the tumblers and goblets in this lovely, fanciful pattern.